Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Fly like a bird and strong like a bear, Imagery and Pilates – Book Review Part III


Imagery is a tool that we use constantly to teach and master movement.  We are all observers of the world, and even if it is below a conscious level, we are making connections and organizing the world within our human experience.  We create images for successful movement, we create images to help us remember movement, and we can use images to help us learn movement.  In this third and final installment of “Katrina’s bookshelf review,” I want to talk about three books by Eric Franklin, an internationally recognized teacher of Ideokinesis, which is an “approach to the improvement of human posture and body movement, in which visual and tactile-kinesthetic imagery guide the student toward healthier form.”  According to Eric Franklin using imagery brings multiple senses into the learning process.  Imagery allows us to access our own experience while learning new movement.  Imagery relies on our past so that we make connections and synthesize new movement patterns.

Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery first came into my life during the Laban/Bartenieff Certification program, and then again it was assigned during the Polestar Pilates rehabilitation curriculum.  In the Polestar Pilates program we were assigned an essay in which we were to write about how to use imagery in teaching.  I thought of many images for this essay, and found one that clearly didn’t work.  The lack of success of this certain image came to the forefront when I shouted it across the room in a studio full of students, and what was once a lively chatter fell to a stunned silence before erupting into unified laughter at the absurdity of my image…While that particular image (which I will keep to myself) did not evoke what I thought it did, I was not deterred.  I loved the idea of using imagery to teach movement and express the connection of movement to the world around us.   In Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery Eric Franklin outlines the history of using imagery in movement, explains why the use of imagery includes all senses in the learning process, as well as how the images used connect to the nervous system.  It is a complete guide to create posture that moves with you.

I came to Pelvic Power much later in my teaching experience.  Two years ago, I started reading this book, which is about strength in the pelvic floor and the pelvic floor’s role in pelvic stability and the overall health of the spine.  The audience intended for this book is the student of movement.  The student that needs to relieve pain, the student that wants to understand why his or her pelvis is made the way it is.  The student that is wondering, “What in the heck is the pelvic floor?”  Through concise explanations Eric Franklin breaks the pelvic floor down into parts, and then explains how to strengthen the pelvic floor for the most balance and efficiency of movement.  His exercises are so much more accessible, yet so much more sophisticated than the usual, “You need to do some kegel exercises,” which is generally given for pelvic floor strengthening homework.

The final Eric Franklin book that I want to talk about is Relax Your Neck and Liberate Your Shoulders.  We are spending the majority of our day in front of computers, and our neck and shoulders not to mention our cardiovascular system are suffering the consequences.  This inactivity shows itself in shoulder blades that are separated from the ribcage and a head that is being held onto the spine with the muscles that should be connecting the shoulder blades to the ribcage.   Relax Your Neck and Liberate Your Shoulders explains these anatomical connections and then gives easy to use examples of mindful ways to change the relationship between our neck and shoulders so that we can achieve the success of relaxing our necks and liberating our shoulders!

Eric Franklin’s accessible writing in each of these books takes complicated biomechanical concepts and makes them accessible to any reader.  I recommend any of these three books to any reader who wants to make use of a fabulous imagination to create healthy movement in a mindful way.  If perchance you are this person and want to find these books follow this link to The Pilates Studio’s Amazon Store!

Katrina Hawley
Co-Director of The Pilates Studio


  

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